A Disconnect

[lorenzop]

Also, Steiner entices his followers with the promise of acquiring shiny subtle objects he labels as 'spiritual', but are simply finer levels of relative existence - if these objects exist at all.

The question is whether we can have clear consciousness within these 'simply finer levels of relative existence', and speak meaningfully about them? Because if we dismiss such a possibility, then even if someone speaks from concrete experience, we'll always see it as shiny fantasies.

So I have no interest in shiny subtle objects either. I'd much rather talk about the simply finer levels of relative existence. How deep can we go in them? In what relation our intellectual life exists to them? How can we express the experiences at these levels? Or would you say, like Eugene, that these levels are too orthogonal to anything we can experience on Earth, and thus we can only speak in nebulous generalities (thus anyone speaking of these experiences in greater resolution is by definition a lunatic)?

I don't see the above as the question, I'm sure there are finer levels of relative existence, and folks can acquire knowledge of these finer levels and speak meaningfully about them (ie Physics) . . . and perhaps angels, Atlantis and etc.
The question I have - Is seeking expertise in finer levels of creation within the category of spiritual growth, or is it a shiny source of bondage?
Isn't Steiner's stated need for a specific brand of thinking just a case of the separate self saying Hey you need me to report on all this fine stuff.
There is no freedom is this glittery gold.

[Stranger]

So we are on the same page there. But you often add 'wild card' phrases like "dismantling the older ones and creating the new ones". What is a concrete example of this for you at the higher-order levels? I know we can make analogies to playing music and so forth, which is why I ask about the higher-order level. For ex. at the level of a curvature that structures a whole epoch of time, about 2,000 years from our normal earthly perspective. What would it look like to dismantle this curvature and create a new one?

More precisely, older structures do not get "dismantled", but are left behind and get replaced by new ones.

Anyway, music is a good example actually. Consider this musical form, which is actually a rather high-order spiritual activity for anyone who can perceive it. Even 20 yrs ago, let alone 2000, such musical structure would be unthinkable. This music does have its own structure, but it does not follow any previously known musical curvatures and you don't find there any traditional musical structures such as classical tonal harmony or rhythm.

[AshvinP]

So we are on the same page there. But you often add 'wild card' phrases like "dismantling the older ones and creating the new ones". What is a concrete example of this for you at the higher-order levels? I know we can make analogies to playing music and so forth, which is why I ask about the higher-order level. For ex. at the level of a curvature that structures a whole epoch of time, about 2,000 years from our normal earthly perspective. What would it look like to dismantle this curvature and create a new one?

More precisely, older structures do not get "dismantled", but are left behind and get replaced by new ones.

Anyway, music is a good example actually. Consider this musical form, which is actually a rather high-order spiritual activity for anyone who can perceive it. Even 20 yrs ago, let alone 2000, such musical structure would be unthinkable. This music does have its own structure, but it does not follow any previously known musical curvatures and you don't find there any traditional musical structures such as classical tonal harmony or rhythm.

This is actually a horizontal comparison of creative manifestations within a higher-order curvature, not a leaving behind of the higher-order curvature and creating a new one. The higher-order curvature here is the musical notes, scales, intervals, etc. that make the manifestations of both classical tonal and atonal music possible. I used a similar (perhaps more extreme) example in a previous essay, and I agree atonal music points to new degrees of freedom within a higher-order curvature.

What is happening in this Schoenberg piano piece that strikes us as so strange and perhaps even frightening? It is not the so-called dissonance between the tones, but rather it is the lack of any familiar pattern to their unfoldment in the Melos. That is what many people do not realize about the greatest composers of the last few hundred years - even the most sophisticated symphonies and operas are chock full of routine measures and tonic progressions which appeal to our emotional and sensual experience. These are soul-experiences which have been laid down within us over the course of many millennia, not merely a single lifetime. So when Schoenberg presents us with something genuinely novel, we naturally recoil in horror. That is especially true if we have not imaginatively explored this musical territory before. After several hearings, and hopefully with the assistance of this essay, listeners should begin to perceive the fierce individuality which goes into both composing and imaginatively contemplating such novel "atonal" music.

That was basically drawn from Steiner:

During this course of lectures on tone eurythmy, I have often found myself thinking of a very significant Austrian musician of the present day. This musician, who was born in Wiener-Neustadt, opposes all modern music with extraordinary vehemence, denouncing it as ‘bad European music’. This in itself is an interesting phenomenon, and should be of special interest to eurythmists. Hauer [33] began to study music at a very early age, between his fifth and eighth to ninth years, by playing the zither, and he progressed far, coming to the view that it does not take much to acquire all that we presently call music. We can feel in Hauer's whole manner of expression that in a certain respect he is inwardly extraordinarily honest. On the one hand, he came to the conclusion that what goes by the name of music today is exceptionally easily come by, but, on the other hand, that precisely the musical element is missing, that we are led away from the musical realm. Indeed, very much of what I have to say about the eurythmic presentation of the musical realm can be found in Hauer's writings, although he expresses it in a stark and radical way. He speaks, for example, about atonal music.

I have said that the actual musical element, the spiritual element in music, lies between the notes, in the intervals, constituting that which we do not hear. In speaking about atonal music Hauer touches on something that is very significant and true. He is of the opinion that the production of a note or chord is nothing more than an appeal to the emotions or the senses — merely a means to express externally the inaudible Melos, which presents the inmost life of the human soul.

But, as said, this is not creating an entirely new curvature of spiritual potential at any more than human scale. This is what we have spoken often - the depth of curvatures through which human conscious activity flows. If we don't get concrete about these things, it all just remains floating abstractions. Just as our ideas, feelings, and deeds from one day feed back into what we experience the next day, the next week, or even longer periods depending on the deeds, the ideas and deeds of human collectives in one epoch feed back into structuring the curvature of a subsequent one. An "epoch" - like all other temporal units - is simply our designation for how many states of being humanity generally endures before its cultural and natural environment significantly metamorphoses, creating new conditions for further development.

So it is exactly as you said - "enables us to creatively participate in continuous developing and renewing of the existing structures". What spiritual science does, however, is make this rhythmic participation across nested scales of curvatures experientially concrete. It makes it clear at what scale we are influencing the curvature with our spiritual activity and how exactly our activity feeds back into the developing and renewing of existing structures. Cleric gave a nice metaphor before with the hands of a clock:

Let’s think of a clock. We have the hour, the minute and the seconds arrows. They are turning in exact ratios based on the gears. We can imagine a clock with many more arrows.



...
So the classical clock with different arrows utilizes this sense of duration. We have certain temporal intuition of how much we must endure for the seconds arrow to make a revolution. Now we can move away from the mechanical clock and realize that our inner life already presents us with such inner clock. We simply need to make an attempt to grasp the metamorphoses of our inner states in the course of a day. They are contextual, just like the arrows of the clock. Our day goes through certain phases of our daily rhythms, which are composed of more detailed tasks and so on, until we get to the point of our flow of momentary perceptions and thoughts.

Like in the TC essay, all this is not supposed to make some metaphysical model of time, where we postulate such time-dials existing in themselves. All we do is only gaining a better grasp on our temporal intuition which we use all the time anyway. When we grasp this, we find the contextual rhythms of our life as simple facts of existence, we don’t need to fantasize them as existing ‘out there in time’. The temporal intuition is present in our now, it gives us temporal orientation of the way our state metamorphoses.

We can picture these rhythms as the rotations of the clock arrows. Again – not as some abstract entities but only as symbols for our direct temporal intuition. A slower arrow may correspond to our changing moods, a faster arrow is the overall intuition of the daily tasks, an even faster arrow is the concrete thoughts and perceptions within the context of that task and so on. We simply need to get a feeling for that contextual character of our temporal intuition. Usually we do that only for the flattened sense of duration, such as when we think about days, weeks, months, years, but in our case we need to livingly picture the transformations through which our states will go along that duration. Even if we can’t see the Sun and judge the time of year by the seasons, we still can judge time by the inner seasons through which we have gone. Some parts of our life are marked with certain interests, goals, then they change and so on.

Of course, this intuitive context doesn't end at our changing moods but also goes deeper into the curvatures we were discussing. But we need to build a gradual experiential gradient from where we are now to those higher curvatures to discern the actual, concrete ways in which our spiritual activity influences the intuitive context. You rightly cautioned against abstraction in this domain - "What we are doing here is simply creating abstract interpretations of reality in our imagination and superimposing them onto reality as a whole." The path of modern initiation takes what you are saying there and puts it into practice. It builds directly on the intuitive experience of our rhythmic stream of development and avoids abstracting out to metaphysical postulates and models. The only reason to avoid such a concrete experiential path is because we want to keep imagining we have ways to influence the curvatures to our liking that would otherwise be revealed to us, in no uncertain terms, as unrealistic. Or, conversely, to avoid imagining the concrete ways in which our inner activity actually influences the curvatures of our own stream of destiny.

[Cleric K]

I don't see the above as the question, I'm sure there are finer levels of relative existence, and folks can acquire knowledge of these finer levels and speak meaningfully about them (ie Physics) . . . and perhaps angels, Atlantis and etc.
The question I have - Is seeking expertise in finer levels of creation within the category of spiritual growth, or is it a shiny source of bondage?
Isn't Steiner's stated need for a specific brand of thinking just a case of the separate self saying Hey you need me to report on all this fine stuff.
There is no freedom is this glittery gold.

I see, but this returns me to the question to you, which you didn't address. What falls in the category of spiritual development for you? What is spirituality? I know you have mentioned before that meditation for you is a kind of shutting down for a while. I guess that developing that skill counts as spiritual development in your view. But what is the point? Probably it gives you some quiet time but what makes it different from simply taking a good sleep? In what way you are becoming freer?

[lorenzop]

I don't see the above as the question, I'm sure there are finer levels of relative existence, and folks can acquire knowledge of these finer levels and speak meaningfully about them (ie Physics) . . . and perhaps angels, Atlantis and etc.
The question I have - Is seeking expertise in finer levels of creation within the category of spiritual growth, or is it a shiny source of bondage?
Isn't Steiner's stated need for a specific brand of thinking just a case of the separate self saying Hey you need me to report on all this fine stuff.
There is no freedom is this glittery gold.

I see, but this returns me to the question to you, which you didn't address. What falls in the category of spiritual development for you? What is spirituality? I know you have mentioned before that meditation for you is a kind of shutting down for a while. I guess that developing that skill counts as spiritual development in your view. But what is the point? Probably it gives you some quiet time but what makes it different from simply taking a good sleep? In what way you are becoming freer?

I'd suggest that the Transcendent, Unboundedness, Emptiness, etc . . . whatever be one's preferred word . . . be the 'spiritual'.
Spiritual Development is the deepening familiarity, living or nurturing of this Unboundedness (I Am )
As the Gita would say "Established in Being, perform action"

[Cleric K]

I'd suggest that the Transcendent, Unboundedness, Emptiness, etc . . . whatever be one's preferred word . . . be the 'spiritual'.
Spiritual Development is the deepening familiarity, living or nurturing of this Unboundedness (I Am )
As the Gita would say "Established in Being, perform action"

That's good but would you say that this nurturing of the Unbound I Am gives you any knowledge of reality? Something that can give direction of action (as referred in the Gita quote)? Because the realization of Oneness with the Cosmos is way too general. Solipsism is always Oneness. This reminds me of the video that Ashvin recently posted with Michael James. In the end, he couldn't tell if there's really something that is Bernardo or it only seems so.

These are not insignificant matters. It makes a world of difference if there's karma or not. If I lean towards karma being just a stick for scaring the ignorant, I'll see it as something that takes away my freedom (a falsehood invented by the Demiurge or something like that). Just think how liberating it is to know that everything is just a dream and it makes no difference whether I kill somebody, whether I spend my life fornicating, etc. My working theory can be that this is precisely what I (MAL) wanted to experience. I especially created this sandbox so I can enjoy the pleasures of the flesh and the thrill of murder. Then if some alter speaks about karma I'll see it just like a shiny object, a figment of imagination.

We've been through this so many times. Being familiar with the mystical experience doesn't even tell us whether existence continues after death. Then, like Michael James, we exist in uncertainty. It seems there's something that is Bernardo, yet we're not sure. It could be just a figment of the imagination of the Self. But just to be on the safe side, we'd rather not kill that figment because who knows, maybe there's such thing as karma and reincarnation, and we suffer next life.

I'm not trying to convince you in anything, I'm just trying to explicate your position (because you don't want to do it yourself). I would call it one of extreme agnosticism. Yes, there's existence - this is self-evident. Also there's this weird possibility to break the train of thoughts and feel not bound by our skin. But that's pretty much it. In fact, this unbounded feeling could be just an effect of brain activity that has lost its references to things known. Then the brain loses all sense of scale and believes it is as large as the Universe. So in that sense we can't even rule out materialism! And anyone who speaks about inner depth is considered to extract only shiny falsities.

I'm no longer trying to give any indications. I'm only pointing out why any such indications will be immediately dismissed out of hand. When we have thought ourselves into a corned of our soul, we can only cling to the fact that there's such thing as existence and for some annoying reason we have to suffer our way through it. But that's pretty much all we can say about it. From that position we can deny and reject anything - just because we can - nothing stops us.

My point is that we can at least be clear that the objections we hear about spiritual science are not about it specifically but would apply to anything that tries to speak with some concreteness about spiritual reality. So I'll see it as progress if next time we hear not "Steiner is a fraud for trying to convince others in the reality of shiny spiritual objects" but "Anyone who says that we can know something about the spiritual world is a fraud."

[Anthony66]

Cleric,

I've read your response here a number of times in the days since you posted it and it is finally started to resonate.

Much of what you write is irrefutable. But the connection between spiritual activity and thinking would be challenged by the average theist who would want to maintain a separation between the activity of higher realms and our activity. The transcendent God of classical theism maintains a fundamental creator/creation separation. But yes, all of this is metaphysical speculation and inference.

I still have an inclination in me that finds it preferable to direct one's eyes heavenward rather than on dots and vowels, albeit understanding why one is better placed to grow one's perspective from small to big and greater levels of encompassing thinking. Whether that translates to focusing on the inner stillness or the shiny spiritual godlike images, it seems more aligned with spiritual tradition of which I've had a lifetime of.

I see. Well, it really boils down to self-determination. You've had a lifetime of tradition, yet you are still looking for something. The question is whether you are seeking the bridge between the creator/creation separation or you simply seek some thoughts and feelings that can make your life in the creation pole more fulfilling?

I think the idea that God maintains this fundamental separation has no real ground, even in the scriptures:

21 That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.
22 And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:
23 I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.

In fact, the whole Christ event can be understood as the act through which God initiates the bridging of the chasm between the World (perceptions) and His Spirit. Comprehending the Christ mystery is ultimately about overcoming death while still in the body. This is not about some theoretical comprehension but actual transformation of our whole mode of being. We are moved from the position of an onlooker/commenter on creation (a position which is necessarily brought to an end at the moment of death) to the very center of Cosmic unfolding, which is the same both within and outside the web of sensory entanglement. The new testament can only be fulfilled through our I's perspective. Two thousand years ago people could behold the Christ in a body as onlookers and comment on the events to this day, but now He can only be known in Spirit and Truth.

So it is really a question of where do we place ourselves in this Cosmic drama. Could it be that the separation doctrine is used as some kind of buffer, which gives us the piece of mind that we can mind our own Earthly business, while God takes care of his Divine work? And if we feel that to become human in the full sense we need to find our spiritual being as embedded within the Divine Being, then how do we initiate this process?

If spiritual science and the views expressed here were dissociated from the religious traditions, particularly Christianity, then these issues that I'm highlighting wouldn't have the same gravity. But tying concentration exercises and the transformation of consciousness to the Christ event is quite a disconnect from 99.99% of what has comprised the various traditions arising out of those events in Palestine 2000 years ago.

I was in discussion with a Jehovah Witness last night trying to present an esoteric take on things and I had the feeling like I was forcing a rectangular plug into a round recess while discussing various biblical passages. The straightforward reading of the text is one of a creator deity, separate from creation, who is interested in obedient followers.

The transformation of our whole mode of being is done by the creator - he takes the initiative and he completes for we are powerless. So goes the traditional Christian story.

Yes I've had my fill of this traditional narrative. And I find it unsatisfactory. What you speak of makes more sense apart from trying the fill the new wine into old wineskins.

[Cleric K]

If spiritual science and the views expressed here were dissociated from the religious traditions, particularly Christianity, then these issues that I'm highlighting wouldn't have the same gravity. But tying concentration exercises and the transformation of consciousness to the Christ event is quite a disconnect from 99.99% of what has comprised the various traditions arising out of those events in Palestine 2000 years ago.

I was in discussion with a Jehovah Witness last night trying to present an esoteric take on things and I had the feeling like I was forcing a rectangular plug into a round recess while discussing various biblical passages. The straightforward reading of the text is one of a creator deity, separate from creation, who is interested in obedient followers.

The transformation of our whole mode of being is done by the creator - he takes the initiative and he completes for we are powerless. So goes the traditional Christian story.

Yes I've had my fill of this traditional narrative. And I find it unsatisfactory. What you speak of makes more sense apart from trying the fill the new wine into old wineskins.

Let’s try the following to see if the ‘disconnect’ will make more sense.

When speaking with your JW friend, there’s something that has to be firmly kept in mind. Try to experience as vividly as possible how reality feels for such a person.

We can imagine that we feel as a soul sphere – inner soul space, where all our thoughts, feelings, perceptions are experienced. Outside that sphere we imagine that there’s God and the Earthly world that he has created.

At the cognitive center of this inner soul space is the Bible. It stands there as a kind of kernel to which other thoughts can attach as fitting puzzle pieces. Any puzzle piece that doesn’t feel to snap to the Biblical kernel is rejected. We should really try to feel how because of our faith, this Biblical kernel serves as the foundation of our cognitive life. It gives us support in the same way the Earth gives support to our feet.

JWes are not the only ones who have their cognitive Bible-kernel. Each one of us also has one – it’s the support of the senses and all the memories (factual knowledge) we have accumulated so far. We are materialists if we zealously swear by this kernel and insist that every new mental puzzle piece should fit snuggly there. The pieces that feel to be even slightly incompatible are immediately rejected.

But what can we say about such things as inspiration and insight? Of course, the materialist will immediately rationalize any such phenomena as resulting from some lucky combination within the kernel. Yet if we’re a little less fanatical about it we may conceive that thoughts can also coalesce around the kernel from an ideal stratum that feels subconscious, much like a snowflake doesn’t produce its own water crystals but they coalesce from the environment.

We should appreciate how man of our age, no matter if he has a Biblical or physical kernel for his cognitive life, desperately needs such support which feels external, objective. The materialist will feel as if he’s going mad in a sensory deprivation chamber. The JW’s cognitive life will fall apart if his knowledge of the Bible is taken away. We feel secure when our feet are on the floor, the floor rests on the walls, the walls rest on the foundation, the foundation rests on the ground, but what does the Earth rest upon?

The most challenging evolutionary transition for man today is to find this support within his spiritual being. This can only come about when we get the feeling that our cognitive life rests upon an ideal order, the same one from whence conscience, inspiration and insight precipitate into thought-forms. Then we no longer seek the mental puzzle pieces that can fit strictly in the external kernel but we experience thoughts as artistic forms through which we explicate the hidden ideal order (of course, if they are truthful they'll also resonate with the external kernel, probably expanding it from its narrow limits). Our intellectual ego feels as floating on the surface of that hidden order, as if at the boundary where the purely intuitive becomes perceptible. The less certainty we have of the hidden order, the more we need to ground ourselves in external kernels. The more conscious we become of our inner life, of the way we continually explicate thoughts from the hidden order, the more intuitive orientation we attain and the more we find stability in the invisible.

The ancient Greeks called this hidden ideal order the Logos, the Word. And John wrote “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” However, what John wrote about can never be seen as emerging from the kernel of the written glyphs and hitting us in the face.

I believe this is at the true core of the whole ‘disconnect’ topic. It can be useful to distinguish between two kinds of disconnects. One is healthy. It is the same as the disconnect we feel the first time we learn to swim, when we go through that magical moment, where we realize that life doesn’t end when we are no longer supported by the sea floor. Our feet disconnect from the sea floor kernel. The whole historical significance of something like spiritual science amounts to this magical moment – the transition from the intellectual soul to the spiritual, from cognitive life that always needs the support of an external kernel, to inner life that feels supported from all sides by the hidden order of the ideal Cosmos. We know that ideal Cosmos not because we blindly believe in it, nor because we see it as yet another external support but because in our thinking ego we’re clearly conscious that we have lifted our intellectual feet from the rigid kernel below us and we still exist, the world has not ended. We feel that we exist within hidden streams of purely intuitive life and we can artistically express this intuitive world in concepts and images.

The second disconnect – that there’s no connection between the Bible and what has been just described – is only apparent. As said, it is perfectly true that the reality of what we talk about will never bubble out from within the pages of the Gospels. This would defeat the whole purpose! Such bubbles will simply turn into another external kernel! We’ll still feel that our inner life is supported and given shape by something external. But even more interestingly – even the explicit explanations given above do not contain the essence. There are plenty of people here who see such words only as some kind of doctrine, another ideological kernel that is supposed to give us our shape and tell us what we’re allowed to think and what not. And even those who genuinely strive to understand these things may fail to do so as long as, without noticing, they still seek that magical axiom, that special cognitive kernel of all kernels that will finally provide the ultimate feeling of security, that finally our cognitive life rests on the most secure external foundation of all.

Speaking in this way maybe makes it seem like one needs some special Grace in order to find that inner transition. And in a way we can say that, but not in the magnitude that we imagine. For example, isn’t it a kind of grace when we experience the first moments of riding a bicycle? Before that we had all kinds of advices “hold on to the handlebars”, “keep your balance” and so on. But in the end, we can’t say “OK, I know what I need to do, I’ll just do it step by step and at the end I’ll know how to ride.” It might happen like this but it might not. We simply need to keep trying until we get it. Is ‘getting it’ Grace? It can be seen in that way because the first time we get it, we do something that we have never done before (that’s why we couldn’t do it before that – we simply don’t know what inner gesture to perform). So the first time we get it, it’s a kind of Grace but one that we can very easily earn by simply trying to understand what others say and putting a little effort to try it out.

Finding our inner being as rooted in the ideal order leads us towards the experience of the Logos. Then we understand that the whole Biblical story leads to this moment. That moment doesn’t simply add up as another puzzle piece to the external Biblical kernel, but instead we now feel our whole intellectual ego as a puzzle piece embedded in Cosmic ideal order. The apparent disconnect is really a ‘connect’ because even though the light of intuition that illuminated our inner world doesn’t emerge from the dead ink of the Bible, it is what makes the latter comprehensible. Even if everything that we now say was written word-by-word in the Bible, it would still constitute only an external kernel. One could still object that the spiritual transformation itself is not contained in the words and thus there’s a disconnect.

To understand the nature of the disconnect we need to clearly distinguish between the Logos as yet another mental puzzle piece that simply fits in the external narrative of the Biblical kernel (eventually pointing towards mysterious but unknowable realities out there), and the Logos as the center of harmony of the ideal order, around which our own ego takes form. And if these last words sound as just another handful of mental puzzle pieces that do not even fit nicely in the external kernel – whatever its nature might be – then I’m not sure that adding even more words will help.

[Anthony66]

If spiritual science and the views expressed here were dissociated from the religious traditions, particularly Christianity, then these issues that I'm highlighting wouldn't have the same gravity. But tying concentration exercises and the transformation of consciousness to the Christ event is quite a disconnect from 99.99% of what has comprised the various traditions arising out of those events in Palestine 2000 years ago.

I was in discussion with a Jehovah Witness last night trying to present an esoteric take on things and I had the feeling like I was forcing a rectangular plug into a round recess while discussing various biblical passages. The straightforward reading of the text is one of a creator deity, separate from creation, who is interested in obedient followers.

The transformation of our whole mode of being is done by the creator - he takes the initiative and he completes for we are powerless. So goes the traditional Christian story.

Yes I've had my fill of this traditional narrative. And I find it unsatisfactory. What you speak of makes more sense apart from trying the fill the new wine into old wineskins.

Let’s try the following to see if the ‘disconnect’ will make more sense.

When speaking with your JW friend, there’s something that has to be firmly kept in mind. Try to experience as vividly as possible how reality feels for such a person.

We can imagine that we feel as a soul sphere – inner soul space, where all our thoughts, feelings, perceptions are experienced. Outside that sphere we imagine that there’s God and the Earthly world that he has created.

At the cognitive center of this inner soul space is the Bible. It stands there as a kind of kernel to which other thoughts can attach as fitting puzzle pieces. Any puzzle piece that doesn’t feel to snap to the Biblical kernel is rejected. We should really try to feel how because of our faith, this Biblical kernel serves as the foundation of our cognitive life. It gives us support in the same way the Earth gives support to our feet.

JWes are not the only ones who have their cognitive Bible-kernel. Each one of us also has one – it’s the support of the senses and all the memories (factual knowledge) we have accumulated so far. We are materialists if we zealously swear by this kernel and insist that every new mental puzzle piece should fit snuggly there. The pieces that feel to be even slightly incompatible are immediately rejected.

But what can we say about such things as inspiration and insight? Of course, the materialist will immediately rationalize any such phenomena as resulting from some lucky combination within the kernel. Yet if we’re a little less fanatical about it we may conceive that thoughts can also coalesce around the kernel from an ideal stratum that feels subconscious, much like a snowflake doesn’t produce its own water crystals but they coalesce from the environment.

We should appreciate how man of our age, no matter if he has a Biblical or physical kernel for his cognitive life, desperately needs such support which feels external, objective. The materialist will feel as if he’s going mad in a sensory deprivation chamber. The JW’s cognitive life will fall apart if his knowledge of the Bible is taken away. We feel secure when our feet are on the floor, the floor rests on the walls, the walls rest on the foundation, the foundation rests on the ground, but what does the Earth rest upon?

The most challenging evolutionary transition for man today is to find this support within his spiritual being. This can only come about when we get the feeling that our cognitive life rests upon an ideal order, the same one from whence conscience, inspiration and insight precipitate into thought-forms. Then we no longer seek the mental puzzle pieces that can fit strictly in the external kernel but we experience thoughts as artistic forms through which we explicate the hidden ideal order (of course, if they are truthful they'll also resonate with the external kernel, probably expanding it from its narrow limits). Our intellectual ego feels as floating on the surface of that hidden order, as if at the boundary where the purely intuitive becomes perceptible. The less certainty we have of the hidden order, the more we need to ground ourselves in external kernels. The more conscious we become of our inner life, of the way we continually explicate thoughts from the hidden order, the more intuitive orientation we attain and the more we find stability in the invisible.

The ancient Greeks called this hidden ideal order the Logos, the Word. And John wrote “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” However, what John wrote about can never be seen as emerging from the kernel of the written glyphs and hitting us in the face.

I believe this is at the true core of the whole ‘disconnect’ topic. It can be useful to distinguish between two kinds of disconnects. One is healthy. It is the same as the disconnect we feel the first time we learn to swim, when we go through that magical moment, where we realize that life doesn’t end when we are no longer supported by the sea floor. Our feet disconnect from the sea floor kernel. The whole historical significance of something like spiritual science amounts to this magical moment – the transition from the intellectual soul to the spiritual, from cognitive life that always needs the support of an external kernel, to inner life that feels supported from all sides by the hidden order of the ideal Cosmos. We know that ideal Cosmos not because we blindly believe in it, nor because we see it as yet another external support but because in our thinking ego we’re clearly conscious that we have lifted our intellectual feet from the rigid kernel below us and we still exist, the world has not ended. We feel that we exist within hidden streams of purely intuitive life and we can artistically express this intuitive world in concepts and images.

The second disconnect – that there’s no connection between the Bible and what has been just described – is only apparent. As said, it is perfectly true that the reality of what we talk about will never bubble out from within the pages of the Gospels. This would defeat the whole purpose! Such bubbles will simply turn into another external kernel! We’ll still feel that our inner life is supported and given shape by something external. But even more interestingly – even the explicit explanations given above do not contain the essence. There are plenty of people here who see such words only as some kind of doctrine, another ideological kernel that is supposed to give us our shape and tell us what we’re allowed to think and what not. And even those who genuinely strive to understand these things may fail to do so as long as, without noticing, they still seek that magical axiom, that special cognitive kernel of all kernels that will finally provide the ultimate feeling of security, that finally our cognitive life rests on the most secure external foundation of all.

Speaking in this way maybe makes it seem like one needs some special Grace in order to find that inner transition. And in a way we can say that, but not in the magnitude that we imagine. For example, isn’t it a kind of grace when we experience the first moments of riding a bicycle? Before that we had all kinds of advices “hold on to the handlebars”, “keep your balance” and so on. But in the end, we can’t say “OK, I know what I need to do, I’ll just do it step by step and at the end I’ll know how to ride.” It might happen like this but it might not. We simply need to keep trying until we get it. Is ‘getting it’ Grace? It can be seen in that way because the first time we get it, we do something that we have never done before (that’s why we couldn’t do it before that – we simply don’t know what inner gesture to perform). So the first time we get it, it’s a kind of Grace but one that we can very easily earn by simply trying to understand what others say and putting a little effort to try it out.

Finding our inner being as rooted in the ideal order leads us towards the experience of the Logos. Then we understand that the whole Biblical story leads to this moment. That moment doesn’t simply add up as another puzzle piece to the external Biblical kernel, but instead we now feel our whole intellectual ego as a puzzle piece embedded in Cosmic ideal order. The apparent disconnect is really a ‘connect’ because even though the light of intuition that illuminated our inner world doesn’t emerge from the dead ink of the Bible, it is what makes the latter comprehensible. Even if everything that we now say was written word-by-word in the Bible, it would still constitute only an external kernel. One could still object that the spiritual transformation itself is not contained in the words and thus there’s a disconnect.

To understand the nature of the disconnect we need to clearly distinguish between the Logos as yet another mental puzzle piece that simply fits in the external narrative of the Biblical kernel (eventually pointing towards mysterious but unknowable realities out there), and the Logos as the center of harmony of the ideal order, around which our own ego takes form. And if these last words sound as just another handful of mental puzzle pieces that do not even fit nicely in the external kernel – whatever its nature might be – then I’m not sure that adding even more words will help.

I don't think people operate with a single kernel, be that the bible or the spectrum of sensory impressions. The JW would appeal to both in addition to his rational faculties and even the laws of logic. The Anglicans have their 3 pillars of authority - scripture, reason and tradition.

Of course your most contentious statement, the point of pivot, is "The most challenging evolutionary transition for man today is to find this support within his spiritual being." I wanted to respond, "Says who?" but was reminded of my question to you almost a year ago to the day, "But where do we actually derive our marching orders from?" for which the essence of your response was to develop an expanding intuition of the temporal structure of the Cosmos.

I find it interesting you mention the Logos here given this was mentioned by Sheldrake in his discussion with Kastrup. Thinking of Jesus as embodying the Logos is certainly a lot to get one's head around. I feel there is a disconnect between viewing Jesus in this light and viewing him as the one who "died for our sins" as a propitiatory sacrifice.

[AshvinP]

I find it interesting you mention the Logos here given this was mentioned by Sheldrake in his discussion with Kastrup. Thinking of Jesus as embodying the Logos is certainly a lot to get one's head around. I feel there is a disconnect between viewing Jesus in this light and viewing him as the one who "died for our sins" as a propitiatory sacrifice.

Anthony, as a really brief comment on the above, consider the following.

We know Logos is the Greek root of our words logic, which is the basis of philosophy, and all the -ologies we get in the sciences. When you get on this forum to read and write, you are participating in this Logos in a way you normally don't during the course of sensory life. Especially now that you are logically contemplating supersensible living realities, as opposed to the sense-based and flattened concepts of standard philosophy/science.

Imagine all the other things you could be doing instead of participating on this forum, all the pleasures you could be indulging. Wouldn't you say this is a sacrifice that was made to exercise your Logos faculty? That some old parts of you had to die so these new ways of thinking (and also feeling and willing, to a more limited extent) could be born?

"That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness."

As soon as we start streaming our thinking a bit more fluidly and imaginatively, more resonantly with the language of feeling characteristic of those times, we will begin to notice these deeper connections between ancient scripture/theology and what we are doing in our own thinking experience, as the latter evolves from stage to stage. It is continually dying to be reborn at higher stages that turn the 'lustful' layers of being we were previously flowing through, inside-out, so we can participate in freely and creatively managing them in logical ways. To sin is to 'miss the mark', and we can only hit the mark we freely set in our ideal life with a finely-tuned thinking instrument that is no longer dragged around by sensory events and soul passions, but becomes ever-more creatively and morally responsible for its perceptual flow. This applies not only at the personal scale but also the collective scale. It is the very process by which the World Content is redeemed and spiritualized.